Worlds End Shop

Main menu

Category Archives: Skirts

Way back in 1986, the Worlds End shop had just opened again after being closed for nearly 18 months. It had been closed because Vivienne’s business had been going through a difficult yet transformative period in which she had finally finished all business ties with Malcolm McLaren,had been living in Italy, met future business manager Carlo D’Amario & had been working on the designs for what was going to be the Mini Crini collection. She had then gone to New York & shown the collection there.When she came back to London, the only people working for her were myself, my brother Joe, Carlo’s girlfriend Jeb & my grandmother Dora.At this time I was also taking up photography & Vivienne asked me to take some pictures of some new items she was working on.Two of them are shown here.The girl on the steps of Worlds End is a glamorous neighbour we had at the time called Mandy.She is wearing a white round collared shirt (no orb embroidered on it yet, that was still to be developed) & one of the alternative crini skirts Vivienne was designing at the time. This skirt was a lot longer than the mini crini & was made in city stripe suiting (mentioning this, Vivienne was also making these same skirts out of the denim from cut up Levi jeans, patched together).In the second photo are two friends from the time. On the left is Jane Francis, commonly known as Minnie who was going out with another friend of mine, Oleh Witer the creator of an Australian band called Big Pig (Oleh modelled in the Time Machine fashion show). Minnie later worked at Westwood for several years.The girl on the right is Rosemary Turner who did the door at Philip Salon’s nightclub, the Mud Club.Here they both are on the Kings Road having a portion of chips.Minnie wears a sample dress & Rosemary wears a mini crini outfit & star belt.

There are so many different new mini kilts in Worlds End shop right now that we just had to do a shoot with all of them together & what better idea than to get some of the many lovely women working behind the scenes here at the Elcho St office to dress up & show their legs! (the plots in the Carry On films of the 70’s were always vehicles for this after all).
The brief was to style themselves, the only stipulation being that they did not blatantly use other designer stuff (apart from my range).
First worn by Linda Evangelista for the A/W 93 ‘Anglomania’ collection in Paris; the same show that Naomi Campbell famously stumbled over in her blue Elevated Gilly shoes; the mini kilt has been a Worlds End classic for many years.I asked the staff taking part if they would introduce themselves & write a quick something about the shoot, shop & kilts, so now over to Saoirse, Shop Manager Lise (who doesn’t have to write anything, she will sell you one), Rachel, Raffaella, Alba, Sophie, Dolce & Leliena. Continue reading →

On the Worlds End label is the 430 Kings Road shop’s mission statement:
“The shop has a triumphant history of creating “clothes for heroes”- dandies, rockers, punks and pirates. “Worlds End Look” is chosen from classics with items from the latest Vivienne Westwood collection, special; samples and one-offs”.

The latest additions to this look are now in store & include reproductions of classic Worlds End items from seminal early 1980s collections. Like all the items with the Worlds End label they are exclusive solely to The 430 Kings Road shop & no one else has them!
All styles are unisex.
In the first photo Jamie is wearing a pirate waistcoat and matching trousers in brown herringbone cotton from the Pirates 81/82 collection. He also wears the sleeveless Apache shirt from the successive Savage SS82 collection. The trousers are also available in a tartan we call ‘Mac Stone ‘and the third option is in an ultra -light soft cotton baby cord offered in a rich navy.

In this photo Jamie is listening on his headphones & this is a direct reference to the time in the early 80’s when these clothes were first designed. The first Walkmans were produced at this time & were used by Malcolm who was promoting an attack on the music industry by advocating that people record their own music from the radio onto tapes & not to pay for it.BowWowWow was his band at the time & their first single was “C30, C60, C90 Go” (C30 etc were the playing minute lengths of recordable tapes). The music industry at the time retaliated against Malcolm by actively placing this track lower in the charts than it should have been placed, keeping it out of the top 10 where it would have had more playtime…

In the second photo Freya wears the new Punkature shirt made in pure cotton, specially woven shirting. This is also available in White.
The Punkature collection (SS83) with its emphasis on distressed inexpensive fabrics was like a futuristic interpretation of Punk, complete with safety pins & shirts printed with scenes from the film Blade Runner.

The third photo shows Freya wearing a Climate Economy jumper (Coming Soon!) & the long full gathered Hobo skirt printed with Native Dancers Print in pure Cotton. This piece comes from the Buffalo Collection (also known as Nostalgia of Mud) from AW83.
At the time Malcolm explained the look of this collection by saying “What’s interesting about England right now is that there is a definite movement to get involved with the Third World; to wear an African dress, and put it with a Dominican hat, throw in some Peruvian beads, and wear make-up like one of the tribes in New Guinea – simply because we have to go even further to demonstrate that we want to get out of this island mentality, this village we live in, and relate ourselves more to those taboos and magical things we believe we’ve lost ”. Rather an ironic thing to say really after this year’s Brexit vote.